About 60,000 people in the Amazon have gone hungry as falling river levels paralyzed transport and fishing. Millions of dead fish have also contaminated rivers, leading to a shortage of clean drinking water, the Reuters news agency reported.

Caused by El Niño—a cyclical warming of tropical waters in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean—such a severe drought usually occurs once in a century. But the 2010 disaster comes just five years after the latest Amazon "megadrought," according to Reuters.